Young prosecutor prepares to step into leading role in St. Joseph County

THREE RIVERS -- John McDonough paced around the restaurant nervously on election night, wearing the quintessential uniform of a 20-something male: A golf shirt, cargo shorts and flip-flops.

The jitters were so bad earlier in the day he'd vomited before he cast a vote for himself as St. Joseph County prosecuting attorney.

Then, the 28-year-old Three Rivers native waited anxiously for the results.

Jennifer Harnish | Kalamazoo GazetteIn Tuesday's Republican primary election, John McDonough, 28, defeated his former boss, St. Joseph County Prosecutor Douglas Fisher, in the first contested prosecutor's race in the county since 1968. Fisher fired McDonough in April after McDonough declared himself a candidate for county prosecutor.

Tuesday's Republican primary election pitted McDonough against his former boss, incumbent Douglas Fisher, in the first contested prosecutor's race in the county since 1968. The election had been highly anticipated since April, when Fisher fired McDonough for running against him.

"I honestly can't compare it to anything I've experienced," McDonough said of Election Day. "I've never been nervous like that in my life."

Euphoria set in when McDonough found he'd beaten Fisher by 163 votes. "It was the greatest night of my life," he said.

McDonough is expected to start his new job on Jan. 1. No Democrat filed to run for the office in November and no write-in candidates have surfaced.

Of Michigan's currently elected county prosecutors, McDonough -- just three years out of law school -- would be the youngest, according to the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan.

The position will be a challenge, one that former St. Joseph County Prosecutor Jeffrey Middleton calls "the most important job in any county."

"There's nothing inherent that says a 28-year-old can't do the job," said Middleton, who was 33 when he was first appointed prosecutor. "You need a lot of energy. It takes a lot of hours."

McDonough says he knows he has a lot to learn, but he's confident he can be a good prosecutor.

"I'm ready to put my foot forward and get going," he said.

Son of a mayor
McDonough was born in January 1980, two months after his father, Robert, was elected mayor of Three Rivers at the age of 27.

"Three Rivers Has First Family," the local newspaper announced on its front page.

McDonough, the oldest of four boys, often traveled to Washington, D.C., with his father, who is now the Fabius Township supervisor. He got an insider's view, touring the vice president's office and watching a White House briefing.

His mother, Katie, has taught in Three Rivers public schools for 30 years.

In 1998, McDonough graduated from Three Rivers High School, where he participated in the debate team.

His entire family has attended the University of Michigan, where McDonough said he experienced the best moment of his life, prior to Tuesday -- running out of the tunnel with the football players on game day. McDonough -- who looks like a football player with his 6-foot-4-inch, 230-pound frame -- was the team's equipment manager.

After graduating, McDonough entered Thomas M. Cooley Law School. During his final year in 2005, he joined Fisher's office as an unpaid intern.

Questioning witnesses
Right away, he was put to work on the highly publicized case of Lisa Dolph-Hostetter, who persuaded her husband and brother-in-law to murder her lover's wife. It was a complex case, one on which the A&E television show "City Confidential" later based an episode.

McDonough remembers his first day, walking into the office library and seeing 15 file boxes filled with information. Fisher told him to learn it all. "You need to know this case inside and out," McDonough recalls Fisher saying.

For 10 weeks, McDonough studied the files, memorized names and listened to hours of phone conversations.

"I felt like I probably knew the facts and the people just as well as anybody," McDonough said. "That's what my job was."

It was his first time stepping into a courtroom and Fisher allowed him to question some minor witnesses. Dolph-Hostetter was convicted.

That same year, an old classmate of McDonough's was charged with injuring his month-old son. McDonough helped win that conviction, too.

"Prosecuting someone I'd known since elementary school, that was a very, very tough thing to do ... but once you go through the facts and see what happened to the child," he said quietly, his voice trailing off.

For McDonough, those two cases gave him a taste of prosecutorial life. Others took notice, too.

"He had two very interesting and important cases," Middleton said. "That was a little unusual to take an intern and turn them loose."

Hired, then fired
In August 2005, Fisher hired McDonough as an assistant prosecutor. The then-25-year-old made no secret of his career ambitions.

"My aspirations from Day One -- and Doug knew it -- were to be the prosecutor," he said. "I wanted to one day sit at the end of the hall."

But McDonough figured he'd run in 2012, after the 62-year-old Fisher's next term.
Then one day, McDonough said, Fisher told him that he planned to retire mid-term after securing re-election in 2008 and push for assistant prosecutor Holly Curtis to replace him.

Their conversation spurred McDonough to announce his own candidacy for prosecutor in April -- and Fisher to fire him because of it.

After he was criticized for the firing, Fisher told St. Joseph County commissioners a few weeks later, "I commit to serve a full, four-year term. ... You have my word."

Neither Fisher nor Curtis could be reached for comment.

Middleton called the decision to fire McDonough a "no-win situation" for Fisher, who has the legal power to fire assistant prosecutors unless there's a union contract that outlines terms for a dismissal.

"It's hard to say what is the right course of action," said Middleton, adding the firing could have played a factor in Fisher's losing the election.

Talk of the town
Around Three Rivers, there are reminders of the hard-fought campaign.

McDonough has leftover political signs stacked in his garage, while a few linger in front yards along Main Street.

And the story of the 28-year-old defeating his old boss is still a topic of conversation around town.

"Folks are talking about it," Dennis Huyck, a local Elks Lodge member, said late last week. "They're a little surprised."

Added Middleton, "I think that conventional wisdom was Doug Fisher was going to win. John was a good guy, but he didn't have enough experience. His turn would come. Obviously the voters felt otherwise."

He will likely inherit two high-profile investigations: The unsolved murder of 11-year-old Jodi Parrack, whose body was found last November in a Constantine cemetery, and the death of Calista Springer, 16, who perished in a house fire while chained to her bed.

One question McDonough, who hasn't worked since he was fired, must answer is the future of the office's four assistant prosecutors. He said he won't rush a decision but admitted that his dismissal "created a situation in the office where there was animosity." But, he described the staff as "competent attorneys."